LA Times' Restaurant Reviewer "Outed"

Just in time for the holiday season, the LA Times' restaurant reviewer S. Irene Virbilia was "outed" by an irate Los Angeles restaurant ownership partner. In this case, the outing involved posting the reviewer's photograph on the Web, along with including some harsh words about her. The ownership partner also threw her out of his new restaurant, a Vietnamese-styled place called "Red Medicine," so that she could not review it. The details are available via la.eater.com; the story originated in LA Weekly.

The presumed case for anonymity involves a notion that a restaurant needs to be appraised by a reliable witness who has a characteristic dining experience in the establishment. If he or she were "known" by the restaurant, the reviewer would in all likliehood have an experience skewed to impress their judgement and thus garner a favorable outcome for the restaurant. The implicit belief among most readers of major publications is that restaurants can't "game" the major pub's way of reviewing, thus ensuring the reader an "impartial" opinion of the experience. A case in point is The New York Times. If you were to poll, say, 100 Times subscribers, it's a safe bet that nearly all would say the impartiality of the paper's critics (not only those who monitor the food world) is above reproach.

Restaurant owners cannot afford to be indifferent to a critic's power. The business stakes are often high ones, and a lukewarm review by whoever is carrying the flag for (name your prestigious mainstream media outlet) can mean financial calamity for the enterprise. What "Red Medicine's" ownership partner did was something almost every other owner and chef has wanted to do at some point in his or her career. It's safe to say one could extend that notion to the arts, with the movies being Exhibit A for the plaintiffs.

While one may agree that unflattering reviews are a risk that comes with the territory, the bigger problem is the concentration of opinion in one reviewer's control. It is a curiosity that the most politically liberal cities in the United States feature publications whose reviewers can single-handedly make or break a business or project. The lack of diversity in tastemaking accepted by the urbane, often politically liberal readership in those cities implies a desire for groupthink. I would find this phenomenon off-putting, and even disturbing, except that chasing the "hot" new restaurant is a useless activity. Who cares?

The phenomenon is not limited to restaurants, shows, or handbags. Wall Street is notorious for groupthink; The Street's one distinction is the number of firms providing opinions on a firm or an offering. Of course, there's more than groupthink going on with the financial players. There's big money at stake. Not following the herd or the "desired" opinion can lead to analysts and salespeople being denied information or opportunities to offer products to clients. (Two examples of these sharp elbows were Hank Greenberg's AIG and Jack Welch's GE.) The result is a barrage of information to which few insiders give any credence. Further, we got a heavy dose of Wall Street bullshit twice within the past decade, during the Internet bubble and the disastrous, systemic corruption which led to the financial catastrophe of the past few years. Do these episodes generate any faith in the positive value of groupthink?

In fairness, the LA Times' Virbilia tried to perform her job with integrity. Her approach won't change because an ego-driven, financially uptight restaurant owner outed her. In fact, the incident might make her job simpler and end the unsustainable, pointless need for anonymity. However, the incident does highlight a desperate need for more opinions with a developed point of view. Opinion aggregators such as Zagat simply don't offer any depth of reasoning beyond a smarmy, "pithy" comment. The Michelin Guides roll on, with their teams of anonymous inspectors making very credible evaluations. The problem is that Michelin's Delphic utterances don't articulate in detail why a restaurant is worthy of patronage. Well, at least it's a start in the right direction. Sophistication takes a big step forward when one craves something more than groupthink, and is not satisfied with limiting ideas to one reviewer's thumbs up or down.

The image shows the iconic Michelin figure with chefs during a 2008 Tokyo event.